


To skate again

by mrsredboots



Category: White Boots - Noel Streatfeild
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-14 00:14:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9148345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrsredboots/pseuds/mrsredboots
Summary: The Sabena plane crash of 1961 proves a turning-point for both Harriet and Lalla.  Rewritten March 2017; I was not quite happy with the original story.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luckydip](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckydip/gifts).



Harriet stood looking, completely blankly, at Alice Goldthorpe, her one-time governess and now travelling-companion and chaperone. Goldie had just told her that the Belgian plane carrying the US Figure Skating Team on the first leg of its journey to Prague, where the 1961 World Figure Skating Championships were to be held, had crashed near Brussels, killing all on board. Harriet was to have flown out to Prague the following day, but the Championships had already been cancelled.

“Let’s get you home,” said Goldie, not unsympathetically. Max Lindblom, Harriet’s coach, was standing stunned, as unable to take in the enormity of this tragedy as Harriet was, and Harriet held out her hand to him, to make it clear he was welcome to come with them.

They had barely reached home when the telephone rang. It was Lalla Moore, the girl who had introduced Harriet to the love of skating. Lalla’s aunt, who had brought her up after the death of her parents in a tragic accident caused by skating on wild ice, had hoped that Lalla would turn out a world champion, but what Lalla turned out to be good at was show skating. She did take part in several British, and even one European championship, and had done fairly well, but as soon as she was old enough, she joined a professional company and, with her old nurse as chaperone and companion, travelled with them around the world. Harriet, meanwhile, had continued to skate at championship level, although she had never risen higher than the top ten in Europe, and the top fifteen in the world. This year, 1961, was to have been her final championship, and then she was to become a coach, teaching other children to skate and to find joy in the sport.

“Harriet, I’ve just heard. I can’t bear it for you!”

“Never mind about me,” said Harriet, who had been thinking of the skaters, their families, and their coaches, who she had met so often at competitions, and who she would never see again. “Think of the poor families who weren’t on the plane. Think of the poor skaters left behind. That’s who I can’t bear it for.”

“But it was to have been your last championships!” said Lalla, who tended still to see things very much from her own point of view.

“Yes, but who knows, I could have slipped on the stairs going to bed tonight, and twisted my ankle. No, Lalla. It’s ghastly, but we can’t just think of our own grief.”

“You sound like Goldie – I bet that’s what she’s just said.”

“Well, of course! Actually, she also said, and do think of it, that the USA has just lost all its top coaches at one fell swoop, and we ought to encourage people like Max to go out there and teach.”

“That does sound like a good idea. Then the likes of you and me could fill in here.”

“Why you? I thought you were going to go into show management when you stopped actively performing? And surely you aren’t going to stop just yet, are you?”

“Well, I haven’t really decided. And I’m too shocked to decide anything right now, except I need you and Goldie. We’ve cancelled tonight’s performance, and it was our last here – we will be on our way to London tomorrow, and then fly out to Japan on Sunday for six weeks there. But my contract expires during our time there, and if I said I wasn’t going to renew, they’d let me go, I think. Can I come to you tomorrow, and we can work things out?”

“Of course you can. Come straight from the station!”

Lalla came. And between them, she, Harriet and Max – and Goldie and Nana, who had also lost friends and acquaintances in the crash – began to get their grieving done, and to make plans for the future.

Max would go straight to the Broadmoor training base at Colorado Springs, along with one or two other senior British coaches, to take hold there and see how they could help ensure continuity of training and growth of a new generation of champions. Harriet, accompanied by Goldie, would go with him, although they agreed she would not necessarily stay there if, by teaching in England, she could free up a senior coach to move to the USA. Lalla remained with her company as one of their principal show skaters.

And so it was done. Harriet stayed in the USA for a year, and then came home to teach locally. Lalla, eventually, gave up professional skating and also trained as a coach; after so many years of travelling, she decided to settle in New York, where she eventually married a fellow coach. Harriet, too, married a fellow coach in London, and they taught together for some years. The local rink closed in the early 1980s, but she and her husband were able to find a post at one only a little further away. Children came and they, in their turn, learnt to love the sport.

Harriet and Lalla remained in touch, but only saw each other once a year, at the World Championships. It was rare for either of them to have a skater qualify for Worlds, and in many ways, they preferred it when they didn’t, but could just take tickets for all the events and sit together and catch up on the year’s doings.

By the mid-1990s both women were approaching their mid-50s, their children were either at, or just off to university, and they were wondering what they would do for the rest of their lives. Harriet’s marriage, sadly, had failed some years earlier, and she was once again living with Goldie, now rather frail in old age but still very much the old, incisive Goldie. Lalla was still happily married, and working at the prestigious training facility at the University of Delaware. Great was her joy when compulsory figures were abolished in 1990 - “Now, see, if only they’d abolished them thirty years ago, I’d have beaten you in every competition we ever entered,” she proclaimed cheerfully to Harriet.

“Yes, of course you would – but then, you never did have any patience!” retorted Harriet. “I preferred to go for the long haul. And, seriously, I don’t know how the young are going to learn the skills they need without the discipline of figures to teach them. These new Moves – I don’t know what the standard will be like, or what to teach, or how to teach it. Oh well, we’ll find out as the months go by, but I don’t like my skaters having to be guinea-pigs.”

In 1995, the World Championships were held in the United Kingdom for the first time in many years, and Lalla came to stay with Harriet for a few days before and after. She came down to the rink with her, and gave some positive critique to some of her pupils.

“Do you have many adult pupils?” she asked, looking at the sprinkling of adult skaters that had joined the children training before school and work.

“One or two, but mostly they dance, rather than do free. And I don’t teach dance, as you know, or not as my primary speciality, anyway.”

“Thing is, in the USA there’s a growing realisation that it is a sport for life, not just for children. In fact, Delaware is hosting an all-Adult national competition next month, to see whether there’s sufficient interest in making it an annual event!”

“That sounds interesting. What disciplines?”

“Well, there’s school figures” – Lalla used the American term – “and then men’s and women’s singles at various levels. You know we have an adult test track, now? So they can compete at Bronze, Silver or Gold, and perhaps higher levels will be added in time. Then there will be pairs and dance, too, of course. And – and this is the one I’m interested in – an artistic category. It seems to be basically interpreting a character or a song on the ice; I rather fancy having a go at that!”

“It does sound grand. I know one or two of my older skaters who would be interested if we had something like it here. But will you really compete?”

“Wouldn’t you, in figures?”

“I suppose – no, probably not. I haven’t trained seriously in years.”

“Nor have I, but I’m not going to let that stop me!”

And, indeed, a few weeks later Harriet received a joyful email from Lalla saying that she had competed and placed third in a class of skaters aged 56 and above! Harriet was thrilled for her friend, and told her so. And four years later, the first ever international Adult competition was held in Villard-de-Lans, in France. Harriet, slightly against her better judgement, allowed herself to be talked into competing in compulsory figures.

Competing as an adult was, she found, very different to competing as an elite skater. Everybody was friendly and helpful, wishing each other luck. There were not many entries in Harriet’s class, and she was delighted to finish second.

Lalla excelled herself. She had always been good at imitating people, especially when skating, and her artistic programme that year was a rendering of “Puff the Magic Dragon”. In the 90 seconds allowed, she managed to convey both the fun of a small boy playing imaginary games, and the sadness of an outgrown stuffed toy, and won by several clear points.

Both women agreed, afterwards, that it had been one of the highlights of their skating careers. “If I’d known how much more fun it would be to compete as an adult than as a child, I’d have waited until I was almost 60 to get started!” commented Lalla.

“Well, let’s hope they hold the competition another year. Maybe I’ll see if I can do an artistic, although really, figures is, was, and always will be my thing. And I’ll try to encourage my adult skaters to enter, too. Not necessarily figures, of course, unless they want, but free and artistic – and I have a very promising adult pair coming up. Oh, Lalla – this has quite renewed my love of skating, and makes me so glad to skate again!”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to so many, many, many wonderful adult skaters and especially to those who have given so much of their time to make adult skating a thing, and adult competitions a reality. You know who you are.....


End file.
